Two Thousand Miles Below
Page 15
CHAPTER XIV
_Emergency Order_
The throat of the old volcano was a pit of blackness in the midst ofgray ash and the red-yellow of cinders. Beside it were other flecks ofcolor: red, moving bodies; metal, that twinkled brightly under thedesert sun--and in an instant they were gone. Nor did Smithy, throwingthe thundering plane close over that place, know how near he hadpassed to sudden, invisible death. Rugged pinnacles of rock wereahead. The plane under Smithy's hands vaulted over them and roared onabove the desert.
"Did you see them?" Smithy was shouting.
The man in the forward cockpit turned to face his pilot. "I amapologizing, Smith, for all the things I have been thinking andhaven't said. We've got a job on our hands. Now let's find that foolsheriff who thinks he's hunting for drunken Indians. We must warnhim."
Smithy wondered at the wisps of blue smoke still rising from the ruinsof Seven Palms as he drove in above it. It seemed years since he hadleft the Basin, yet the wreckage of this little town, only five milesoutside, still smoldered.
Colonel Culver was shouting to him. "East," he said. "Swing east.There's fighting over there." Then, in his usual cool tone: "I'll takethe ship, Smith. Give then a burst or two from up here--perhaps thesheriff can use a little help."
Across the yellow sand ran a desert road. Ten miles away black smokeclouds were lifting. Smithy knew there had been a little settlementthere. A dozen houses, perhaps, and a gasoline station. At half thatdistance the clear sunlight showed moving objects on the sand:automobiles, smaller dots that were running them. They came suddenlyto sharp visibility as the plane drew near. Tiny bursts of white meantrifle fire.
They were a thousand feet up and close when Smithy saw the first carvanish in flame. Others followed swiftly. Men were falling. A dozen ofthem had made up the sheriff's posse, and now, like the cars, they,too, burst into flame and either vanished utterly or, like livingtorches, were cast down upon the sand.
Still no sign of the enemy, more than the ripping stab of green firefrom a sand dune at one side. They were over and past before Smithy,looking back, saw the red ones leap out into view.
* * * * *
Culver must have seen them in the same instant. He throttled down to asafe banking speed. Opened full, the DeGrosse would have whipped themaround in a turn that would have meant instant death. From five milesdistant they shot in on a long slant. Smithy's hands were off thestick. It was Culver's ship now.
He saw the man peering through his sights, then the roar of the motorheld other, sharper sounds. Thin flames were stabbing through thepropeller disk, and he knew that the bow guns were sending messengerson ahead where red figures waited on the sand.
Their trajectory flattened. Culver half rolled the ship as they spedoverhead. "He wants a look at them," Smithy was thinking. Then a blastof heat struck him full in the face.
It was Smithy's hand on the stick that righted the ship; only theinstant response of the big DeGrosse motor tore them up and away fromthe sands that were reaching for those wings.
His face was seared, but the pain of it was forgotten in the knowledgethat their drunken, twisting flight had whipped out the fire lickingback from the forward cockpit. He saw Culver's head, fallen awkwardlyto one side. The helmet in one part was charred to a crisp.
He leveled off. He was thinking: "Another man gone! Can't I ever fightback? If I only had a gun!" Then he knew he was looking at the pistolgrip, where Colonel Culver's brown hand had brought an awkward weaponto life. His lips twisted to a whimsical smile, though his eyes stillheld the same cold fury, as he whispered: "And I don't even know thatthe damn thing's loaded--but I'm going to find out!"
* * * * *
They were clustered on the sands below him as he roared overhead. Hewas flying at two thousand, the throttle open full. Beside the ship agun swung its long barrel downward. It sputtered almostsoundlessly--but where it passed, the sand rose up in spoutingfountains.
But his wild speed made the gunfire almost useless. The shell-burstswere spaced too far apart; they straddled the blot of figures.
He came back at five thousand feet, slowly--until the ship lurched,and he saw the right wing tip vanish in a shower of molten metal. Hethrew the ship over and away from the invisible beam; the planewrithed and twisted across the last half mile of sky. He was over themwhen he pulled into a tight spiral, then he swung the pistol grip thatcontrolled the gun until the dot in the crystal was merged with thetarget of clustering red forms. The gun sputtered.
Below the plane, the quiet desert heaved its smooth surfaceconvulsively into the air. Even above the roar of the motor Smithyheard the terrific thunder of that one long explosion.
Above the rim of the forward cockpit Culver's head rolled uneasily;his voice, thick and uncertain, came back through the phone; andlater--only a matter of minutes later, though fifty miles away--Smithyset the plane down on a level expanse of sand and tore frantically athis belt. Colonel Culver was weakly raising his head.
* * * * *
"What hit us?" he demanded when Smithy got to him. "Did I crash?" Helooked about him with dazed eyes from which he never would have seenagain, but for the protection of his goggles.
"Fire," said Smithy tersely. "They did it, the devils, and it wasn't aflame-thrower, either. There wasn't a flash of their cursed greenlight. It just flicked us for a second. You got the worst of it. Yourhalf roll saved us. That thing, whatever it was, would have ripped ourleft wing off in a second."
He was looking at the forward cockpit where the metal fuselage wasmelted. The leather cushioning around the edge was black and charred.Culver's helmet had protected him, but half of his face was seared asif it had been struck by a white flame.
"But we got some of them: they know we can hit back...." Smithy began,but knew he was speaking to deaf ears. Again his passenger had lapsedinto unconsciousness.
Quickly he disconnected their own radio receiver and threw on theemergency radio siren. Ahead of them for a hundred miles an invisiblebeam was carrying the discordant blast. Then, with throttle open full,regardless of levels and of air traffic that tore frenziedly from hispath, he drove straight for the home field.
* * * * *
In the office of the Governor, the radio newscaster was announcinglast-minute items of interest. The Governor switched off theinstrument as Smithy entered, supporting the tall figure of ColonelCulver, whose face and head were swathed in bandages. Culver hadinsisted upon accompanying him for the rendering of their report,though Smithy had to do the talking for both of them.
He outlined their experience in brief sentences. "And now," he wassaying grimly, "you can go as far as you please, Governor. You've gota man's sized fight on your hands. We don't know how many there are ofthem. We don't know how fast they'll spread out, but--"
A shrill wail interrupted him. From the newscasting instrument came aflash of red that filled the room. The crystal, the emergency call,installed on all radios within the past year and never yet used, wasclamoring for the country's attention.
Governor Drake sprang to switch it on, and tried to explain to Smithyas he did so. "It's out of my hands now," he said. "Washington has--"Then the radio came on with a voice which shouted:
"Emergency order. All aircraft take notice. Mole-men"--Smithy startedat the sound of the word; it was the name he had given themhimself--"Mole-men are invading Western states. A new race. They havecome from within the earth. In Arizona, three ships of theTranscontinental Day Line, Southern Division, have been destroyed withthe loss of all passengers and crew. Shattered in air.
"It is war, war with an unknown race. Goldfield, Nevada, is in ruins.Heavy loss of life. Federal Government taking control. Air-ControlBoard orders traffic to avoid following areas...."
There followed a list of locations, while still the red crystal blazedits warning across the land and to all aircraft in the skies. SouthernCalifornia, Ariz
ona, Nevada--Southern Transcontinental Routes closed;all except military aircraft grounded in restricted areas.
* * * * *
Smithy's excitement had left him. In his mind he was looking far off,deep under the surface of the world. "They've been there," he saidquietly, "thousands of years. A new race--and they've just now learnedof this other world outside. Three ships downed! They picked them offin the air just as they tried to do with us. I knew we had a fight onour hands."
His voice died to silence in the room where now the new announcer wasgiving a list of the dead--a room where men were speechless before anemergency no man could have foreseen. But Smithy's eyes, gazing faroff, saw nothing of that room. Again he was seated on an outthrustpoint of rock, Dean Rawson beside him, and from the black depthsbeneath a man's voice was rising clearly, mockingly it seemed, insong:
"You're pokin' through the crust of hell And braggin' too damn loud of it, For, when you get to hell, you'll find The devil there to pay!"
"The devil is there to pay," Smithy repeated softly. He leaned acrossand placed one hand on Colonel Culver's knee. "With your assistance,Colonel, I'd like to go down there and find him. You and I, we knowthe way--we'll organize an expedition. Maybe we can settle that debt."